Old-School Dating Questions Answered

Dating officially died in 2012 when casual sex delivery service Tinder was launched, changing the game forever. While the app certainly has benefits, mainly getting your D wet with a rando, it has definitely taken some of the romance out of courtship. An online date has to be casual, nonchalant, and most importantly, chill—you can’t commit to a four-hour dinner and a movie hang with someone when all you know about them is that they went to Machu Picchu once and “don’t want drama.”

I love GQ (not so much their obsession with Kanye West) and their “tell it like it is” style of writing. This caption may seem crass but it’s all too true with modern dating.

We want something that’s very passionate, or boiling, from the get-go. In the past, people weren’t looking for something boiling; they just needed some water. Once they found it and committed to a life together, they did their best to heat things up. Now, if things aren’t boiling, committing to marriage seems premature. But searching for a soul mate takes a long time and requires enormous emotional investment. The problem is that this search for the perfect person can generate a lot of stress. Younger generations face immense pressure to find the ‘perfect person’ that simply didn’t exist in the past when ‘good enough’ was good enough.

That’s Aziz Ansari from his wonderfully depressing book, Modern Romance. And he’s right. But with the creation of all these apps, I feel like people don’t even bother with pleasantries anymore or know how to be polite to one another. They’re always looking, swiping, surfing, etc. for that next better thing without enjoying what’s right in front of them.

From a guy’s perspective, maybe spend a little more time being invested in who you’re with and how you treat them rather than worrying about finding your socially acceptable idea of perfection.